How to Forgive Yourself

I had an epiphany the other day that I have some serious forgiving to do. And the person I have to forgive is myself.

There are a couple of specific memories that keep arising lately (for whatever reason), and in my telling of these stories, I am the wrongdoer. I keep unconsciously replaying these scenes in my mind, and each time those uncomfortable feelings of regret, shame, disgust, and embarrassment are regurgitated, flooding my body… and for what?! I’m quite sure the other characters in the stories have moved way, WAY on. And so I realized I need to forgive myself so that I may move on too.

In typical Krystal fashion, I came up with a plan (oh how I love a plan!) for how I might go about doing that:

Start where you are. Feel fully what you’re feeling. Denying it or stuffing it down will not make it go away; it will make you sick.
Dis-identify from the action. This is not the same as denying or not owning up to your action (or in some cases inaction), but rather realizing that you are not defined by this or any single moment, action, or event. You are so much more complex than, and are just so much more, period.
Identify the lesson(s). What is the take-away? Pema Chödrön says, “Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” So do yourself a favor and learn the damn lesson so that you can at least potentially halt the cycle and move on to another lesson.
Release the old story. You’ve gleaned from it what you need, and now you are free to let it go. Ooh…that’s scary! If I release the story (even if it’s a painful, nauseating one) then will I not have a story to tell? How will I define myself? Revisit Step 2: You are not your “mistake,” nor are you your story. Go ahead, and let it go. You will not disappear. Hover in the momentary story-less existence. Rest assured, you’ll pick up the pen and start writing another story before you know it. Savor this freedom.
Bring the lesson and yourself into the present moment. Embody it. Put it into practice one moment, one decision at a time. What happened has happened for a reason, to put you exactly where you are today. Now, what will be your next step? You get to choose anything at all. Here’s the healing, the re-write. This is where you empower yourself to change your story. For example, you can change the story you tell yourself about yourself from, “I am someone who lies,” to “I am someone who speaks the truth even when it’s scary to do so, and I live with total integrity.” Or from, “I am someone who is so terrified of confrontation that I turn and run,” to “I am so rooted in myself, centered in my light, and connected to my intention that feeling all the terror in the world cannot shake me or deter me from placing myself in the center of a storm if that’s where I’m needed.” Or from, “I am someone who uses my position of power to intimidate,” to “I am someone who is courageous enough to admit when I feel threatened, and I choose to soften and inquire instead of harden and seal off.”

Releasing and re-patterning. Emotions, stories, memories, regrets — they live in the body, in the cells, in the tight crevices. Sometimes we work from the mind to the body (top-down), and sometimes from the body to the mind (bottom-up). You might ask yourself: What does that uncomfortable feeling feel like? How does it manifest in my body? Where does it live? Breathe there.

Release the expectation to fix or solve anything right now if you don’t feel ready, and instead just invite some space around that constricted area so that there might be some movement, some flow, some relief, however big or small.

“Love yourself, accept yourself, forgive yourself, and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.”

— Leo Buscaglia

As exceptional as I want to believe I am, the truth is that you and I are human through and through. The more we can accept and fall in love with our experience of humanness, the greater peace we’ll find.